Vehicles such as automobiles and trucks ordinarily include an odometer to indicate total mileage that has been traveled by the vehicle over its lifetime. Many such vehicles also include a secondary odometer known as a trip odometer. The trip odometer functions similarly to the primary odometer mentioned above, but may be reset to zero by the driver as so desired. As a result, a driver in such a vehicle can readily determine the distance from one place to another by proper manipulation of the trip odometer.
Not all vehicles are equipped with such a distance measuring device, however. In particular, many recreation vehicles, such as golf carts, provide only rudimentary transportion of passengers and related cargo. Nevertheless, many recreational activities that make use of such recreational vehicles can make valuable use of distance information to the extent that it can be provided. Generally, however, participants of such activities must rely on their ability to estimate distances by sight, on distance indicating markers, or on some portable means of roughly estimating distance, such as a pedometer. (The latter, of course, defeating much of the purpose of utilizing a golf cart or other recreational vehicle.)
Also, the prior art mechanisms described the above function only to measure the distance a particular vehicle travels from an original starting point. In many recreational applications, the user wishes instead to understand how much further his vehicle must travel to reach a particular ending location. For example, a golfer may wish to know, without making independent calculations, his distance from a particular hole. The above-noted prior art devices cannot provide this information.
There, therefore, exits a need for a distance measuring device that can be compatibly utilized with recreational vehicles. Since many such vehicles are already in existence, the device in question should be relatively easily retrofitted into existing vehicles in as unobtrusive and nondestructive a way as possible. Further, such a device must be simple to operate, relatively accurate, and sensitive to the limited on-board support capabilities of many recreational vehicles.